Perhaps you didn’t know you could get a gold medal for something that doesn’t involve running, throwing, jumping or steering something around a challenging course.

But the Gold Medal for Poetry has been with us for quite a while.

It was instituted in 1933 by George V, the Queen’s grandfather, at the suggestion of John Masefield, Poet Laureate at the time.

The first recipient was Laurence Whistler; the second, in 1937, was WH Auden. Gillian Allnutt follows the Scottish poet Liz Lochhead, recently the Makar (national poet of Scotland).

Queen Elizabeth II (Image: Getty Images Europe)

A date for the ceremony hadn’t been announced at the time of writing, but news of the honour came just before Christmas from Buckingham Palace.

The Gold Medal for Poetry is awarded, simply, for excellence in poetry and at some point there will be a presentation.

Gillian’s name was recommended by the Poetry Medal Committee (you might not have realised one of those existed either) on the basis of her body of work.

While there was delight at Gillian’s home in the village of Esh Winning, there was also deep pleasure at Bloodaxe Books, based in Hexham, which publishes Gillian’s poetry.

Four other poets published by Bloodaxe have previously been honoured with the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry – Imtiaz Dharker in 2014, John Agard in 2012, Fleur Adcock in 2006 and the late RS Thomas in 1964 (Bloodaxe Books didn’t exist then but the Welshman transferred allegiance to the North East publisher later on).

Gillian Allnutt first got wind of the honour winging her way from the current Poet Laureate.

As she recalled: “When Carol Ann Duffy emailed in November asking for my phone number – to talk, as she said, about ‘a poetry thing’ – I was truly surprised and delighted when the ‘thing’ turned out to be nothing less than The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

“I am sad, though, that my mother is no longer here.

“She was always a staunch supporter of my choice to be a poet and she would have been so proud.

“Born in 1924, two years before the Queen, she often used to tell us, my sisters and me, about the way the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose helped, through their visible presence, to keep the home fires burning during the war.

“One of my own earliest memories is of standing at the gate in front of my great aunt’s house in New Cross, South London, in the summer of 1953, waiting for the royal open-top car to come by as part of the Coronation celebrations.

“It was hot, I was four, the Queen was held up. She did come, though, as I remember.

“And now I look forward to the honour of meeting her in person.

“When I undertook to do a writing residency with asylum seekers in 2009-10, I felt privileged and grateful to have contact with those people through something, writing, that is so central a part of me.

“It is an equal privilege now, and I am grateful, to be able to imagine meeting the Queen herself – and in connection with nothing less than that same old, dear old ‘poetry thing’.”

Poetry collection by Gillian Allnutt

Carol Ann Duffy, in summing up the Poetry Medal Committee’s choice, said: “From her first collection published in the early 1980s, Gillian Allnutt’s work has always been in conversation with the natural world and the spiritual life.

“Her writing roams across centuries, very different histories and lives, and draws together, without excuse or explanation, moments which link across country, class, culture and time.

■ And just to emphasise the wealth of poetic talent in the North East, the 2016 TS Eliot Prize was won by Jacob Polley, who lives in Whitley Bay, for his latest collection, Jackself, published by Picador.

Jacob was born in Carlisle and is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Newcastle University.

Shortlisted twice before, he said: “I’m humbled and delighted and hope it pushes the book out to meet more people who will enjoy it and for whom it will mean something.”

Sean O’Brien, a professor in the same department, won the TS Eliot Prize in 2007 for his collection, The Drowned Book.

The much-lauded poet and critic described Jackself as “urgent, alarming, funny, breathtaking – a work of impeccable craftsmanship”.